Klein: Put Trust in Antitrust

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Klein: Put Trust in Antitrust

WASHINGTON – Look out, big business: The U.S. antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft is just the beginning.

The Justice Department's top antitrust official said Tuesday that aggressive antitrust suits are crucial to protecting competition in economies dominated by technology.

"Given the speed of today's economy, antitrust is going to become the only legitimate form of government intervention," said Joel Klein, assistant attorney general, in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

Klein, best known as Microsoft's arch-nemesis in the case the Clinton administration filed in May 1998, spent most of his time applauding other countries for becoming more active in prosecutions.

A decade ago, it was "virtually unheard of" for another nation to question business practices, but now 80 countries have enacted antitrust laws, Klein said.

"The worst cases of antitrust abuses occur on the global market, with global cartels," he said.

Klein said that more active international enforcement could be a problem, and global agreements – through groups like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Trade Organization – would be necessary. "Think if one country can block a merger, and then multiply it by 20," Klein said. "This is going to be a monumental problem going forward."

During a recent speech at the University of California at Berkeley's business school, Klein compared the proposed Microsoft breakup to the Bell System divestiture.

"A separate applications company would have the incentive to develop the best possible office suite, not only for Windows, but also for other computing platforms like the Apple and Linux operating systems," Klein said.

Jackson has set a May 24 date for oral arguments on the proposed penalty.